


Dangerous Things

by lifeaftermeteor



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Horror, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Monsters, Orphan Keith (Voltron), Post-Kerberos Mission, Pre-Canon, Pre-Season/Series 01, Science Fiction, Skinwalker, galra druids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-07 05:23:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21452716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeaftermeteor/pseuds/lifeaftermeteor
Summary: Booted from the Garrison and still grieving the loss of his friend and mentor, Keith flees to the remnants of his childhood home and the painful nostalgia it offers. He’s drawn ever further into the desert by some unseen energy but soon discovers he’s not the only dangerous thing making its home there. Now pursued by something malevolent and entirely inhuman, he can only think back on the ghost stories of his younger years and a whispered word: skinwalker.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	Dangerous Things

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2019 Voltron Halloween Zine, "Spellbound."

The Roadhouse skirted the edge of the Plaht City limits, straddling the narrow divide between urban sprawl and the red wastes of the desert beyond. It stood at this crossroads as the final envoy of human civilization to the natural world that met its doorstep. 

For this reason, pretense was unnecessary. The front door creaked, the lighting was dim. The floor was sticky with spilled drinks more often than not. Along the walls were tacked a lone dartboard as well as tokens of luck and protection left by well-meaning patrons. Behind the dented and chipped bar top was an eclectic selection of liquor bottles and the beer tap was always limited. A dusty mirror hung precariously over the collection, but appeared to have been thus for centuries. 

Keith’s father had brought him here as a kid, when they had stopped into town for some reason or another. They would eat fried food and wash it down with cold drinks that fought off the desert heat. He remembered once smelling his father’s beer and wrinkling his nose as the acrid odor, quickly going back to the carbonated sweetness of his soda. Even after the fire that had taken his father, Keith had fled there for the painful nostalgia and familiarity. Riding the buses out of the city, he had sought out The Roadhouse when he didn’t want to return to the orphanage. They knew him, understood him. They lived on the fringes too and recognized a kindred spirit when they saw one. 

The Roadhouse was, therefore, the first place he thought of when the Garrison personnel escorted him to the gate. It was a refuge of sorts, after all. But with little more than the bag on his shoulder and his (soon to be expiring) identification, he had had more pressing matters to attend to. So he had ridden the shuttle bus into Plaht City, identifying items on an invisible checklist to keep his seething to a low boil. 

His final stop was the garage that had stored his father’s hoverbike, the lawyers having paid storage costs for years in advance until he was of-age to collect it himself. Transportation secured, he at last sped out of the city and into the fringes where he belonged—where he’d always belonged—and sought out others like him at The Roadhouse. 

When Keith had stepped inside, it was like stepping back in time and it brought with it waves of relief. The wall of bottles behind the bar, the dartboard, the tokens and totems… A woman he vaguely recognized, with tattoos twining around her arms, stood behind the bar taking and filling requests from clusters of patrons. A young man he didn’t know flitted between tables and conversations with others, bouncing back and forth between the small kitchen and the bar. Keith waved the young man down and asked for a beer before crossing to the table in the far corner, one he and his father had once labeled ‘theirs.’ After the young man returned with his drink, Keith settled in to muse on his next steps into adulthood.

“Hey! Watch your tongue!”

Keith looked over at the bar, shaken from his reverie. Hands on her hips, the bartender glared at a cluster of men standing at the opposite side of the bar. _ Construction _ , Keith judged, _ or digging for resources, _based on their steel-toed boots and reflective vests. 

“Ah, come on Jacki. You don’t honestly believe any of that, do you?” one of the men asked, sounding skeptical. “It’s just an old wives tale used to scare little kids—”

“Story or not, you don’t talk about shit you don’t understand,” the bartender—_ Jacki, _ Keith corrected himself—answered. Bristling, she busied herself once more filling requests from other patrons. “Words have power. And _ talking _ about it _ invites _it. So unless you plan to add another member to your party’s tab, I recommend you kindly shut up.”

Keith snorted before he could stop himself and four sets of eyes turned his way. Even over the distance that separated them, he caught the flash of recognition from the woman behind the bar; the others quickly lost interest, disregarding him as not a threat to their outsider bravado. 

That was fine with Keith: he wasn’t gunning for a fight. Mostly he was just tired; but he watched the workers finish and pay for their drinks and depart with a wary eye all the same. Once they were gone, he made his own way back to the bar to pay his tab. 

“I thought that was you,” Jacki said, giving him a warm smile. “Taller and older, perhaps. But it’s still you. One of Plaht City’s stray cats. Been awhile. How are you, kid?”

Keith tried to smile. He knew that was what people did when someone asked how they were. He’d seen Shiro do it plenty of times, but Shiro had always been better about giving people what they wanted than Keith. His mouth got stuck halfway there and the broken grin faded before it fully manifested. “Not great,” he answered honestly. “I…” he faltered and looked away. “I couldn’t...keep it together. I tried. I did—”

Jacki nodded sagely. “I’m sure you did,” she said, sounding earnest.

“—but it wasn’t enough. So now I’m on my own. Again.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” A beat, and then, “Where are you staying?”

Keith swallowed past the sudden tightness in his throat. “The shack we used for storage is still on the property,” he explained. “The fire didn’t take it. And it’s got the basic necessities, so…”

“In the desert?” 

“Yeah.”

“...by yourself?”

Keith finally looked up and found her concerned. “Yeah, by myself. Why?”

Jacki bit her lip, her eyes darting to the door through which the workers had left earlier. “Be careful out there okay? Especially on your own. Don’t go being stupid like them,” she said, nodding her head at the open door. 

Confused, Keith nodded all the same if only to allay her concerns. 

He took the hoverbike down familiar dirt roads and into the desert. The world passed in a rust-colored blur and the ride felt like a small infinity or the blink of an eye. Eventually, he arrived. Ignoring the skeletal remains of what had once been a house off to the left, he brought the hoverbike to a stop and strode toward the shack’s front door, his feet feeling heavy. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the key that had dangled around his neck for years as a kid, a constant reminder that there was somewhere else. Stepping up onto the shack, Keith let the door slam shut behind him while he studied the tiny room. 

It smelled like home. 

A traitorous thought: there was really no going ‘home,’ he knew. Not after everything that had happened. ‘Home’ didn’t exist anymore. But it was some kindness that he had had a place to return to at all, he supposed. A further kindness that there was anything left that he could call ‘his’ in the first place. What few possessions remained after the fire that had devoured their home and left him orphaned sat in boxes gathering dust in the shack while he lived first in the home in the city and then later at the Garrison. 

He let his eyes drift across the shack, its cobwebs and nostalgia and buried loneliness. A time capsule. A tomb. 

Swallowing thickly, he unceremoniously dropped his bag to the floor and stepped forward into all that was left of his past.

* * *

_ Words have power. _

Keith had dismissed the phrase when he had heard it from Jacki, but now—days later—it reared itself into the forefront of his mind and brought with it a tide of painful memories and no matter what he did, he was unable to dispel the ghosts. Keith thus grabbed his gloves and bandana and burst out of the shack in the desert, moved around the small building to the hoverbike, and climbed aboard. The engine roared to life with the kick of his foot and he took off into the red wastes.

Words had power, or so the abuelas would tell him when he was a kid, hiding in his father’s shadow in some bodega or another on the outskirts of town. Words had power, the bartenders and gang members and good Samaritans would all tell him as he wandered the back alley labyrinths of Plaht City, an orphan boy unable to go home but unwilling to go anywhere else. Words had power and you could speak things into existence if you wanted it bad enough. Good or bad, the universe would turn on a dime and if you willed it to be, it would be.

But Keith never believed it. Curled in on himself on the thin mattress in the orphanage, he had _ willed _ the universe to bring his father back, pleaded until his whispered voice was raw with tears and even so it had not been enough. At school in hushed oaths tucked away in far corners and behind stairwells, he had _ willed _his classmates and teachers to be kind. But the universe would not be appeased and he had been left alone in the crowd, disregarded.

Until the Garrison. Until Shiro, who had offered his hand and with it kindness. And again Keith willed the universe to turn. ‘I’ll show them,’ he had murmured to his reflection in the window of his otherwise empty bedroom. ‘And I’ll make him proud. And then we’ll fly together.’

And for a time...it seemed to work. And Keith started to believe. Like a child. Like a fool. Because the universe exacted its toll in the form of a failed mission and a lost crew.

And Keith had raged and raged and _ raged _at the injustice of it all until the Garrison walls could no longer contain him and they had released him out into the desert sun. And still Keith cursed the universe and the people within until he had no more breath to form the words that lingered on his lips. Until at last he was alone with his grief.

Words had power.

Except when they didn’t.

Teeth clenched against the pain and the dust alike, Keith drove the hoverbike up into the craggy outcroppings and skirted the edge of the abyss as if daring the universe to exact another toll. But the bike responded like an extension of himself and it glided and careened with precision even as he lost himself in his own head. Then up ahead he saw the track run out, promising a vertical drop that he knew how to survive because he had watched and learned from the bravest and the best of them who was no more. 

Choking behind the bandana, Keith brought the bike to a precarious stop at the cliff’s edge and killed the engine. He climbed off and stumbled forward to the precipice that overlooked the dusty landscape below, painted in reds and golds as the sun set along the horizon. Tugging down his bandana, he opened his mouth and screamed. He screamed until his breath left him and his lungs withered in his chest. Until he felt hollow. 

Keith stood then, gasping and heaving, alone in the encroaching night. Nothing but silence answered him, the only sound the wind against the rocks. He buried his face in his hands and stepped backward and away from the edge to lean against the hoverbike. He let his hands fall to his sides and dropped his head back on his shoulders. Blinking up into the twilight sky, he watched stars emerge from the void like sparks from a dying fire. With a heavy sigh, he turned to climb aboard the hoverbike once more.

And then—a cry in response.

Keith froze stock still. The hair at the back of his neck stood on end and with trembling legs, he pushed himself to stand atop the hoverbike. His eyes scanned the valley below for signs of life and saw nothing. The sound had come from a distance, but from where…

And from _ what? _

No animal he recognized, that much was certain. And although he could see nothing below, that didn’t mean that whatever had made the sound couldn’t see _ him. _His mouth went dry at the thought and he struggled to swallow past the vise around his throat. Suppressing the shiver that raced down his spine, he gunned the engine and turned the hoverbike to retrace his path back to the shack.

* * *

Keith dreamed.

Desert heat that rippled and warped the horizon into shattered-glass mirrored illusions. Endless night skies filled with innumerable stars, beacons in the dark. Running water and a luminescent glow and yawning maws of dark caves.

And the lion.

A _ blue _ lion, which led him through his dreams and planted within him a need to act, to answer some silent call from across the vastness of space and eons of time. In its slow-blinking eyes were galaxies and in its fanged mouth was the void. Every night it would call to him, lead him down into the depths of the Earth. Every day he would wake with a longing to _ fly _that he couldn’t understand, much put into words.

Today was no different.

With a growl of frustration, Keith rolled onto his back. He scrubbed at his face with his hands in a desperate bid to drive the vestiges of his dreams away. He then blinked up into the sunlight that filtered through the shack’s cheap, dust-coated window blinds. He sighed and kicked the sheets off of him. Standing, he moved to a pile of discarded clothes and retrieved a t-shirt that had seen better days. He tugged it over his head before shuffling barefoot into the shack’s small living area.

Keith laced his fingers together and settled his hands on top of his head as he moved into the middle of the room and yawned deeply. Blinking the last of the sleep from his eyes, he let his arms fall to his sides before he crossed the small room to a box along the wall. He rooted around in the contents for only a moment, withdrawing a handful of maps and—with a cursory look about the room determining there was no better place to review them—knelt on the floor. He unfolded them slowly, careful not to tear the worn edges, and lay them out before him.

One of them, a large topographical map, showed the outskirts of Plaht City to the south and the network of canyons to the west. Keith ran his finger over the paper until he found the shack’s location and tapped the point twice, committing it to memory. He then slid his finger to the left, feeling and hearing the dry paper sigh under his touch. 

The search had begun.

* * *

Keith mapped out the terrain and the vast network of canyons and caves to the west, extending his search deeper and deeper. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. And still the dreams of starlight and beasts plagued him, driving him ever onward into the desert. 

Until at last he found something. One morning search, he stepped into the mouth of a cave and felt...different. A sense of ‘rightness’ filled him and he felt himself drawn into the dark by some unseen force that wrapped around his midsection and tugged at him until his feet moved forward as if of their own accord. Switching on his flashlight, he let the strange energy lead him onward and as his eyes adjusted to the light he gasped. 

The walls were covered with lions. 

Blue lions, no less. Ancient and faded paintings, they were nonetheless unmistakable. Heart pounding, he fumbled for his mobile and raised it to take some pictures, fighting the rising disbelief at how utterly impossible the discovery was. “Found you,” he whispered to the cave. He turned his flashlight first toward the mouth of the cave and the daylight beyond and then back down deeper into the dark.

He lowered the flashlight then to the rock underfoot. The cave floor was coated with a layer of fine grit and dust...and there were tracks. The sight brought Keith up short as he studied them. They didn’t _ look _like a big cat...more dog-like perhaps. Letting his light drift across the cave floor he came to an uncomfortable realization: the tracks went in...but did not come out. 

Keith checked the blade at his back and wrapped his hand around the hilt. Frustrated with his own apprehension, he swallowed down his anxiety and strode forward, keeping the light trained ahead of him. One eye on the tracks, the other on the darkness that encroached. 

But then...he stopped. 

The footsteps were no longer those of some desert predator but...almost human. Elongated, to be sure, and he could still see the claw marks at the top of each toe but...no longer did they appear to be those of a wolf or a coyote but rather something that walked _ upright _ . But that...that didn’t make sense. He played his light over the tracks again and again, confusion mounting. _ How…? _ He pulled out his mobile and snapped a few photos to add his growing collection back in the shack. 

As the sun climbed higher overhead, Keith mounted the hoverbike and sped off toward home to avoid the worst of the intolerable desert heat. But his thoughts kept returning to the tracks he had seen in the caves. With a sigh, he turned the bike toward The Roadhouse instead. 

The bar was nearly empty this time of day, safe for a few old-timers tucked into corners drinking alone. Jacki manned her post behind the bar and her face brightened as Keith approached. “Good to see you, stray. Been a couple months...was beginning to think you’d gotten carted off by some bobcat. What can I get you?”

“Information, if you’ve got it.” When Jacki quirked an eyebrow at that, Keith explained, “Given where this place is, I assume you’ve seen all sorts and then some.”

Jacki smirked. “You could say that.”

Keith took a seat on a bar stool and pulled out his mobile as the bartender stepped forward, leaning close. “I found this...network of caves out in the desert. They’re covered with paintings of lions—blue lions.” He pulled up the photos he had taken and thumbed through them. He glanced at Jacki and found her brow furrowed as if deep in thought, though she said nothing. Biting his lip, Keith pressed ahead. “I’ve been dreaming about them, so I was a bit freaked out to find them. But that’s not the half of it.” He skipped ahead in the collection to the photos from earlier in the day and pulled up a few of the tracks from the cave. “I’m not a hunter, but I know these aren’t from any big cat. And they don’t look like a dog or coyote—”

Jacki paled. “Stop talking.”

“But—”

From off to the side towards the kitchen, a hiss which startled both of them into silence. Keith turned to find an older man whose face rose up in his memories of times long past, though he could not remember a time in which his face looked so grim. His dark hair had been tied back in a low knot bound with yarn and was graying in streaks from his temples. His dark eyes locked on Keith’s as he took several heavy strides toward them.

Jacki opened her mouth to speak, her tone apologetic. “Azhé'é—”

Her father held up a hand, not unkindly, to quiet her and it was as if some terrible burden had been transferred between them. He closed the remaining distance that separated them and, taking Keith’s hand in his own, said, “You need to leave the desert.”

Bewildered, Keith shook his head. “What—? Why—?”

“Because there are evil things and dark magic in the desert, and you are alone. You cannot go back.”

Keith clenched his teeth and shook his head again. “I _ have _to go back. It’s all I have left—”

The man’s grip on his hand tightened, almost painfully so. “You have been to the caves where the blue lion is painted on the walls. I know: I overheard you from the kitchen. There are dangerous creatures in those places and not all of them are natural. Bad things happen to those who invite their attention. Do not go back.”

“I can handle myself—”

Surprisingly, the man smirked. “With a human, I do not doubt it. But I’m not talking about humans, boy. Do not invite it. Do not antagonize it. Do not go back to those caves. Promise me. I don’t want to read about your death because you refused to listen to me. Promise me you will leave the caves alone.”

Keith stared into those dark eyes that reminded him so much of his father’s and saw only honest concern, perhaps fear. And swallowing past the lump in his throat, he nodded and heard himself say, “I promise.”

Dusk found Keith back at the caves. 

Because of course it did. Promises aside, he knew his incessant dreams of a blue lion with supernovas for eyes would tempt him until he did. He couldn’t _ not _come back. Not after he had found the lion carvings. He was getting somewhere. He liked Jackie, liked her father. But Keith was hardly the sort to believe in magic and superstition. If there was an animal in the caves, he’d deal with it. Or so he reasoned, double-checking to make sure his blade was securely fastened in its holster at his back as he stepped off the hoverbike. So as the sun set and twilight came, he switched on his flashlight and stepped into the mouth of the cave. Retracing his steps from earlier in the day, he dipped the light towards his feet and watched as his boots overtook the older footprints, both his and the unknown creature’s alike. 

But then his ears perked up and the hair on the back of his neck and forearms stood on end as a chill raced up his spine. He wasn’t alone. Freezing where he stood, he strained to isolate the sound that reverberated and rebounded along the cave walls. It sounded almost like...words.

Wetting his lips, he exhaled slowly and crept deeper into the cave. He kept his light covered as he moved forward with whispered steps. 

And then, around a bend that opened up into a larger cavern was the _ thing _. Not human, but human-like. Almost. Even at this distance and in the dim light cast by the glowing purple orb it held in its hand, the creature’s skin was so gray it appeared purple, like a fresh bruise. Its eyes flashed gold, no pupils to be seen, it was dressed in the tattered rags of what appeared to have once been a cloak as it poured over the cave drawings muttering things Keith couldn’t quite understand. Its head twitched and turned as if listening to ghostly voices only it could hear. It snarled and snapped at them. “So long so long so long but found you,” it crooned, its voice rasping as a clawed hand stroked the stone wall. “Trapped for so long but found. For glory. For Zarkon.”

Keith stared at it, too shocked to move. _ Monster _ , he thought first. And then, _ Insane. It’s gone insane _.

As if he had said the words aloud, the creature before him straightened suddenly, going rigid. The change was enough to spark Keith into action, and he silently dove behind a rocky outcropping, swallowing the gasp that threatened to expose him. Dousing his light fully and clamping his hands over his mouth, he waited.

In the near-darkness, Keith heard it move. Claws scraped against rock, pebbles skittered, the purple light approached. Keith held his breath and curled himself as tightly as possible into the shadows of his hiding place, his legs folding up to his chest as he trembled. He sensed movement above and to the left and turning his eyes upward, he watched clawed fingers curl over the rock that hid him.

“I can smell you,” a guttural voice croaked and sighed, the words more growled than spoken. “Hear you. See you. _ Know you. _”

As the face loomed overhead, its gold eyes staring ahead and down the mouth of the cave toward the entrance, Keith watched in horror as the face changed. Its jaw grew outward, so like a wolf and still so wrong, its sharp teeth elongating into fangs—

Then—_ overhead! _ —a deafening _ roar _ of engines. The Garrison! Night flight tests. The rock walls _ vibrated _with the noise.

It was enough, blessedly enough. With a panicked snarl, the creature turned and fled into the dark depths of the cave network, its claws skittering. Keith meanwhile bolted from his hiding place and out of the mouth of the cave, feet pounding the ground beneath him until he reached the hoverbike. He revved the engine and peeled away into the night.

* * *

Keith barricaded himself in the shack. Arms trembling, heart racing, he waited for the attack. Waited for the thing from the cave. Waited for the fear to subside so that he could think beyond the simple fact that monsters were real. For hours he clutched the blade in his fist, a cold sweat sending a chill racing across his skin. For hours he waited. For hours he jumped at every night sound, wired and ready. Or so he told himself. Told himself through the blinding terror that crept into the edges of his vision. 

As dawn broke, he felt the tension subside. _ Nocturnal _ , he told himself. Had to be. It was a monster after all. Or perhaps it wasn’t a monster. Perhaps it _ was _human and he had imagined the shapeshifting, imagined the glowing gold eyes. And with the absurd rationalizations of an impossible encounter, he collapsed into bed, overwrought and exhausted.

Keith woke after dark, startled from a dream he couldn’t remember. He was quiet for a time, staring up at his ceiling, disoriented as consciousness returned and he tried to put the pieces together. He almost dozed off again, surrounded by the familiarity of his room when he heard it.

The skitter and scraping of feet—_ claws _—on the roof. 

Breath caught in his throat, his eyes went wide as he listened to the thing move overhead with the terrible, heart-pounding realization that it had found him, it had followed him home. He lay still and silent in bed as he listened to it move across the roof toward the edge...and then the sudden silence.

Keith swallowed thickly and reached out to take hold of the blade he had set on the nightstand. He then pushed himself up and off the bed, wincing when the bed frame creaked under his shifting weight. Striding forward to the center of the room, he stood between two doors. The one on the right led directly outside, while the other led into the small common area and through that onward to the front of the shack. Torn and fighting rising panic, his eyes darted between them. The front door would be closer to the hoverbike while the other would lead only to the desert wastes behind the house. But which would his assailant choose? Heart racing, Keith stepped toward the door to his left and very slowly cracked the door open to peer around the door jamb.

The thing was already inside. Crouched on all fours, it moved with languid menace and eerie silence through the common area. It paused and studied the map of the canyon and caves Keith had tacked on the wall and seemed to _ smile _, sharp teeth on display. As he watched, Keith’s heart pounded in his chest, so loud in his own ears he feared the thing could hear him. 

As if confirming his suspicions, the thing turned and caught him watching through the crack in the door. There was no reason for silence now. With a cry, Keith slammed and locked the door. The thing crashed into it from the other side with an inhuman roar of frustration. The door rattled on its hinges from the force of the collision. Keith braced his body against it, hoping to keep the barrier in place. 

Futile! A clawed hand burst through the wood next to his head, scratching at his face blindly as splinters rained outward. Keith leapt backward and bolted from the room through the other door and into the night.

Distance, he needed distance! He would be exposed but so would the thing pursuing him, hunting him. Far enough now from the house, Keith spun on his heel and held his blade at the ready as he waited.

But the creature didn’t follow. And didn’t follow. And didn’t follow. “Come on!” Keith snarled through his fear. He shuddered in the growing desert chill and panted, heart slamming against his rib cage as his eyes searched the empty terrain until—_ behind! _

Keith whirled on his heel just as the thing launched itself at him, apparently out of thin air. _ How? _ his brain demanded to know. _ How did it get behind? _ Keith swung the blade before him and the creature retreated out of range...only to disappear again with echoes of vicious laughter. Keith’s fear strangled him and he gasped. _ Toying! Toying with me! _Keith spun, searching the empty dark desert with mounting terror.

The blow came from behind. He toppled to the ground, the air knocked from his lungs, as the thing tackled him. Keith managed to roll to his back before he was pinned immobile and they grappled in the dust. Under the light of the moon overhead, Keith watched the transformation begin. The creature’s face grew large and long and _ animal _ above him, snarling and snapping and _ laughing _ as he struggled. It then lunged down and took his entire shoulder and half his arm into its fanged mouth, biting down into bone and flesh alike. 

Keith cried out, the sound falling wild from his lips as agony exploded through his mind and body. With impossible, terror-fueled strength he tore his other hand from the creature’s vice-like grip and drove his blade deep into the thing’s hunched back. Screaming to the heavens and blood coating his tongue, he stabbed and stabbed and stabbed—

...until the creature released him. It went limp with a watery howl, collapsing on top of him.

Panting, Keith struggled out from under the beast and scrambled away. At last he turned and watched the body shrink and contort, its death rattle returning it to its original form. 

* * *

Keith ignored the curious glances that met his entrance at The Roadhouse. His arm was cradled against his chest in a makeshift sling, both it and his shoulder layered in gauze and bandages. The torn flesh itched and he clenched his teeth to suppress the urge to scratch at his bindings. Taking a deep breath, he strode forward with heavy steps to the bar and took a seat at one of the well-worn stools.

As he got situated, Jacki approached from the other side of the bar. She then dropped a cheap napkin before him, curiosity clear as day on her face. “You look like you’ve gotten some extra mileage since you were here last. What can I get you to ease the pain?” she asked, tipping her chin to his injured arm.

“A beer,” he replied, withdrawing a few crumpled bills from his back pocket with his good hand. “Whatever’s on tap.”

Jacki nodded and turned to fill his request. But when she returned with his drink, there was a wariness about her that hadn’t been there before, as if she’d remembered something that had given her a chill. She set the tall glass before Keith and said, her voice forcibly light, “Pick any fights lately?”

Keith snorted. “You could say that.” He reached forward and lifted the glass to his lips. The beer was cold and bitter on his tongue and he swallowed and swallowed and swallowed...quickly draining the glass.

Jacki watched him drink in startled silence for a moment before leaning close over the dingy bar top, her arms crossing beneath her ribs. “Clearly you’re not the only dangerous thing living in the desert, kid,” she murmured, her voice carrying only so far as his ears.

Keith set the now-empty glass down and licked his lips, letting his fingers glide over the curved planes of the glass until he was able to meet her gaze. He watched her watch him, and what she saw in his eyes must have frightened her, judging by the shudder that sped visibly down her spine. 

Keith grinned, almost feral. “_ Now _I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to work in some lore on skinwalkers (e.g. shape shifters, witches who practice dark magic, don’t talk about them lest you get their attention) in a way that made sense for canon. Every bit of lore comes from some semblance of truth after all, so why _wouldn’t_ it be a Galra Druid who crash landed on Earth and went insane? :D


End file.
